Animation Final Preview #1

I'm almost done with the pre-production stage of my final for Basic Animation Techniques. I'm using traditional cut-out animation mixed with hand-drawn animation, so I've been hard at work creating backgrounds, puppets, getting voices, ect. I can't believe this has to be done in less than two weeks but everything is coming together so much better than I could have imagined, so I'm excited to see how this turns out in the end...hopefully it won't disappoint but with how it's going, I can't imagine it going sour. Anyways, since this is definitely going to be consuming my life until it's over, I'll be posting some preview images occasionally for the next two weeks.

First preview: The 6 kid puppets. All created on Photoshop then they will be printed off on card stock and then sewn together, but in this image I assembled them as they should look.

Sleepy Woody Life Drawings

Woody was sleeping in the dogbed and he was just so cute, I had to draw him. :)

Sound Synch Animation

For Basic Animation Techniques, we had to do a sound syncing animation with simple shapes. Here's the link to mine:

Sing, Sing, Sing Sound Synch

Overall I'm pretty happy with how mine turned out. Although I totally got sick of listening to music, I actually really enjoyed sound-syncing. I usually go by feel when animating but this time I had to be bound by the rules of my music which was an challenging but interesting change of pace. Plus it was pretty cool to see the finish product with the animation fitting to the music (for the most part). Hopefully I learned some from this project, as I'm moving past simple shapes and sound-syncing a dance animation for another animation class I'm sitting in on. Hopefully it will be done by the end of the school year, but here's a "preview" (a single frame!). And if you're curious, the song I chose to do my dance animation is "Send Me On My Way" by Rusted Root. If you haven't heard it before, check it out, it's a fun song.

Science Museum Dinosaurs

I went on a Honors field trip earlier today to the Science Museum. It was overall pretty good, I met a few new people, had to try and explain what art was, and drew lots of dinosaur skeletons. A good start to my day.

Sidewalk Chalk Artin'

With the advent of nice spring weather means the start of sidewalk chalk drawing for the year. Yesterday the weather was just so gorgeous out (80 degrees!) and my very good friend Steph Binner was over at my house (since I am currently pet-sitting/house sitting), so we collabed and did a huge chalk drawing together (6 feet wide by 5 feet high). It took us 2 days to make and I think we spent between 4-5 hrs making it. We drew everyone's characters from our Intro to Animation class and it was lots of fun!

Unfortunately though there is no digital camera at my house right now, so I had to use a laptop webcam to take these photos and also took a few with my old film camera. There was already a half used roll of film and I haven't used it since I was 15 or 16, so I can't wait to see the photos whenever I get around to finishing this roll of film!

It's backwards and kind of blurry....but you can get the point.

And here's a good picture of Steph and me after finishing our sidewalk art creation. Fun times!

Purse Lioness

"Dad, which one is the Mama lion?"
"The one with a purse."

The things people say at zoos never cease to amuse me.

Feathering Models

At the gallery opening on Monday, someone asked me why I spend all the extra time and money just to feather my models. I really wish I could have just pulled out this picture because there's really no need for explanation.

100 Picture Challenge

I haven't really been creating anything new lately since I have been very busy setting up for the DMA gallery on Monday, so I decided to upload some things from my sketchbook. I started working on the 100 picture challenge in this sketchbook, limiting myself to self-portraits or personal characters. Here's a few of my best ones so far:

52. Deep In Thought-November 2008

42. Standing Still-December 2008

28. Sorrow-December 2008

65. Horror-Feburary 2009

46. Family (Heritage)-Jan.-Feb. 2009
(You win if you can guess all of them!)

~Lauren

Unicorn Character Design

This was my submission for the character design competition at my school. I didn't want to take an ugly unicorn. I wasn't expecting much to come from this idea but he actually turned out to quite a fun character to draw and develop. I'll find out on Monday if he placed or not in the competition!

Somewhat April Fools

Madame Récamier by David

Madame Récamier by René Magritte

Can it just be said the Rene Magritte has some of the best humor ever when it comes to art?
Happy April Fools everyone-hope you all pull some good pranks today!

~Lauren